How can the arts inspire us to lead lives of greater meaning and connection? What kind of world are we leaving for future generations?

Julian Lennon is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and NYTimes bestselling author of children's books. Executive Producer of Common Ground and its predecessor Kiss the Ground, which reached over 1 billion people and inspired the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to put $20 billion toward soil health. The natural world and indigenous people are also the focus of Lennon’s other documentaries Whaledreamers, and Women of the White Buffalo. In 2007, Julian founded the global environmental and humanitarian organization The White Feather Foundation, whose key initiatives are education, health, conservation, and the protection of indigenous culture, causes he also advances through his photography, exhibited across the US and Europe. His latest album Jude spans a body of work created over the last 30 years. Julian was named a Peace Laureate by UNESCO in 2020.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Congratulations on the documentary Common Ground of which you are an executive producer. I just saw it and it's an amazingly personal and informative film/series/movement now and with so many people involved being a voice for nature and speaking up for soil that sustains life on Earth. It blows my mind when I think about it, it's kind of magic that one teaspoon of fertile soil contains more living organisms than there are people on the planet! Tell us a little bit about the genesis and mission of the film Common Ground and how you were drawn to the story.

JULIAN LENNON

I thought, wow, how are they going to bring this across in a way that isn't shoving things down people's throats? It's presenting information in a way that is creative, but also in a way that drives your curiosity into understanding, number one, why are we in the position that we're in? And number two, how can we fix this? What can we do to change all of this?

And so, I initially got involved as an executive producer on Kiss the Ground, and I was blown away by how that film came out at the end. How well rounded it was, the flow of the film, the storytelling, and really feeding me information that I didn't even know previously. And so, and also watching that become a platform around the world was jaw-dropping. I mean, the fact that the belief and the understanding and the wisdom that came out of that project has touched so many hearts, minds, and souls around the world, that people are really single-handedly almost making change for the better around the world.

Now, when Common Ground was presented, I did love that concept because Kiss the Ground had been very much a broad approach and about America, for the majority, really, and Common Ground was a much more...I mean, we're still dealing with the same subject matter obviously, but I think it felt great to come from a more personal aspect. 

With this film in particular tugging at people's hearts, regarding family. I mean, really trying to get the point across that this really affects all of us in every way, shape, or form, and that, you know, if we don't do anything...It seems to me that since the beginning of time almost, at least in the corporate world, there's always been walls put up for anything that's organic, positive, natural, and the list goes on. And I think that filters down in many fields. And so be part of something, a positive movement that continues to do such great work, I just keep my fingers crossed. And obviously, my job here as well is to support in any way, shape I can.

And of course, I believe in everything that's being told. It is the truth. These are the facts of our lives at the moment. And, if we don't look after Mother Earth, Gaia, she can't look after us. It's a shared experience. It's a balance between things, everything in life. You know, we need each other. 

Everything affects everything else. So it's key that we all take part in trying to make this place a better world for everybody. And, you know, when you see the logic behind the fact that it is possible to feed the world. It really is. And it's possible to make so many positive changes. You know, I've always been an advocate for, of course, trying to protect indigenous peoples around the world because although their logic may seem simple, it works. It's real. It's respect, not only for one another, it's respect for the Earth that we live on and that can be the only way forward that this is all going to work out. I get frustrated at the fact that I don't see why so many people just don't understand this. It's key. 

Gabe brown · Jason momoa · donald glover · Rosario dawson · Rebecca & Josh Tickell

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Well, I think that's what these films and your other films before - because you've been a filmmaker for a number of years, especially on these indigenous stories and environmental issues - put across so well. We see the health benefits, the difference between healthy soil from regenerative farming and dead soil from industrial farming. There's a spiritual sense in this, too. And we just have to relearn what we've forgotten or been brainwashed by the agrochemical lobby to forget. We have to stop killing the soil that feeds us. There are many positive statistics in the film but one that stayed with me was that if the whole planet adopted regenerative agriculture, we could sequester all the carbon that we're currently emitting.

JULIAN LENNON

We're polluting the seas and the waters. We're polluting the soil. We're polluting every aspect of our lives. So there's no getting away from it. That's absolutely sure. And yes, there is absolutely a way forward to make change. And yes, it is a question of relearning so much, without question. I mean, part of the reason that not only did I start the White Feather Foundation with indigenous tribes in mind back then. And then, one of the key ways forward for me was education, of course. I think that's been part of our problem worldwide. People just haven't known how serious or taken it seriously enough before. And there's so much propaganda that's misinformation that's pushed out into the world. You see in the film as well how the truth gets pushed away and shoved aside by money and greed and corporations. And that's a really difficult one to get over, but, you know, writing the children's books was a way to get in the same theme. Again, not shoving it down their throats, but presenting the situation as is and getting children to say...Reading and asking and reminding their parents, and relearning as well. Why is there plastic in the water? Why don't they have any water over there? Why, do you know, why? And there are answers for all of this, and the parents need to pick up on that too.

But this should be made, you know, these two films and many more should be mandatory. I mean, you want to talk about Clockwork Orange...I don't mean pinning their eyes back, you know, forcing them to watch the film, but certainly, this really should become part of the curriculum in many ways.

I hate to use the word logic all the time, but if you're not ignorant and you have an understanding about the world around you, then you know how you can help it. You can know how to make changes and how to move forward. And this is exactly what these films do.

So, may that Josh and Rebecca and everybody who supports them continue moving forward and making more films because until things change, which they are changing, thankfully. I think it's a real credit to Josh and Rebecca, how many lives they've changed and how many eyes and ears they've opened through the course of their filmmaking.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Speaking about your environmentalism and your children's books, which have been all about the Earth - Touch the Earth, Heal the Earth, Love the Earth, which could be seen as like an entryway into the adult audience for Common Ground and your other films. You point to something being wrong with our global Capitalist system. And you've spent so much time in your documentary work and your photography, visiting Indigenous peoples. You know, colonialization just didn't take over the lands, but language was lost. And with that Indigenous intergenerational knowledge. I know that you made the film Women of the White Buffalo, which is about the Lakota people. And I always remember something Tiokasin Ghosthorse said. It's quite powerful. When you think about the Lakota language being a language of verbs and not nouns and ownership. "Dogma and domination have no relationship with the Earth. It's taken us away from the language of the Earth, we have to remember how to speak the language of the Earth."

JULIAN LENNON

This is why protecting the Indigenous around the world has been an important cause for me because of that history, because of their knowledge, and the potential of losing it forever. I know that around the world that there are groups that are striving and doing the best that they can to maintain and hold onto those languages, doing as much research and capturing as much of that knowledge as possible. You know, fortunately, there are some incredible, dare I say, youngsters these days who are learning, who have such respect for their elders and their history and their past. They are learning the language and holding onto it as best as they can. As I said, I think the fact that it's all being recorded now and put down, and hopefully nothing further bad happens. I think it's key because we've learned so much from the Indigenous. You know, we're part of that history. It's just we've lost our way. They still know where they're going. It's just the rest of us that have been misguided, I would say, in the bigger scheme of things. The other thing was we, you know, for many, I mean we didn't know any better. That's no excuse, but, you know, we all rode on that bandwagon too of enjoying life to the extremes before we knew, really what that meant, how that abused not only people but the Earth. And the situation that we live in, as you see in the film also, I think we're only just seeing the tip of the surface really about the quantity of illness that is coming from the past 50 years of the way things have been done. I mean, the general public didn't know about so, so many of the bad things that were happening. The poisoning, the chemicals in our food, in all of our products, whether it's from, deodorants to hairsprays to makeup. It's really only in the past few years that there's been a decent should I say shift in that world and that finally some companies are taking responsibility for their actions and their positions, and they're trying to change things too. So little by little, little by little, but, but it's working.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Your environmentalism, of course, goes way back. We hear in your songs like “Saltwater”. Tell me a little bit about founding the White Feather Foundation. I believe its name has a deeply personal significant meaning.

JULIAN LENNON

The song "Saltwater" was number one in Australia and top 10 around most of the world, except for America, where the label I was working with did diddly squat, so nobody really heard it there, but I was number 1 in Australia. We're touring in Australia and in Adelaide, I was called down by the hotel management saying we have an indigenous tribe down here with a couple of international camera crews with a bunch of people. I don't know, 30 people maybe, and they want to talk to you. And I'm going, what about? Because, you know, I was just on the road, and I thought that perhaps, as people do on the road, they play gags on each other, you know. It's a common thing on the road. So I thought it was a joke that there was a group of Aboriginals downstairs.

Anyway, the management calls up, I go down, and lo and behold, there's a semicircle group of Indigenous peoples called the Mirning people. And it was on a small step-up platform, and I walked towards them and the elder, Iris, who's a female, walked up to me with a male swan's white feather, which is about yay big. And I'm thinking, What is this? What's going on? And she says to me, "Can you help us? You have a voice." And what hit me was that many, many, many years ago, Dad had said to me when we were together, that if something were to happen to him, that the way he would let me know that either he was going to be alright, or that we were all going to be alright, would be in the form of a white feather. So when, you know, I'm given this white feather by one of the oldest peoples on the planet, to me that was undeniable. Goosebumps. I just thought, if that's not a sign, I don't know what is, you know? If that's really not a sign. I don't know what it is. So I just said, "Okay, I'll do what I can for the children."

And so I spent on and off, 5, 10 years making a documentary called Whaledreamers about not only the Mirning tribe, but it tied into another film project that the director and I were working on called The Gathering, which is where we brought together 80 elders from around the world, from all the indigenous, as many as we could get in from around the world to meet together around a fireplace and to, you know, talk about their woes and the problems that they have had, and they were all the same. They were all the same. Used and abused, murdered, you know, thrown off their land. The list goes on. And so, it was difficult making the documentary because it was the birth of the Internet. And so the part of the team, the editor was in Byron Bay in Australia, and I was here in Europe. So editing took forever. Anyway, once the film was finished, we were lucky to get a small screening in Cannes, but we won about, not that this is important, but we won about eight independent film awards. And I just thought, Okay, well, you know, if the film makes some money, I really want the money to go back to the Indigenous tribes.

And one thing led to another and I started getting emails saying can you help us with this project? And can you help us with this project? And then I thought, well, maybe I'm in a position where I can continue this. Maybe I can do some further work and good. And so I just thought about the things that were most important to me, looking after indigenous people, cultures, and their land was really important. Clean water, absolutely essential. Obviously, health and education was a massive one. All of that, a lot of that came out of the travels between South America with the Kogi, going to Ethiopia, and the different processes - actually with an organization called Charity Water with Scott Harrison who took me out there to see the wells. The before, during, and after the water wells had been brought to life. And in Kenya, going to schools and health clinics, and being there with the kids. And it was the UN Millennium Villages Project that we were tied in with. That's where it all came from. What touched me the most were those particular subjects. And so, we're, we're a small foundation, and I don't want to be a big foundation. We tend to capture the people and the causes that fall through the cracks, you know. It's all the little projects that nobody seems to get around to, and we live on donations from the public. I mean, that's predominantly how we survive, and how we help people around the world. I mean, all over the world. So it's been a blessing in disguise being able to be fortunate enough to help people out around the world and work on the White Feather Foundation and be part of projects like this, too. So it's a meaningful life.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

I've been enjoying also your recent album Jude, and your music throughout your career. I wonder with all your travels and what we see in your photography, what your future collaborations in music might be?

JULIAN LENNON

I don't honestly know entirely where I'm headed musically. I still have a lot of songs that I haven't finished that are relatively recent and some that go back to 40 years ago, if not more. You know, projects like this last album Jude, partially songs that never had a home, you know, that didn't quite fit on an album or another project. And so, I mean, strangely enough, what I've been doing personally for the end of this year has been going through trying to get all the admin out the way, so to speak. For instance, in the last six months to a year, but intensely so in the last few weeks, I've been archiving over 100,000 photographs of mine so that I can put more collections together, so I know where things are, et cetera, to get on with the creativity of photography next year and hopefully get around to a few more charity trips. Same thing with the music, getting that under wraps on the admin side. I don't want to do work with another label again, I think. I prefer to be in a position, where things organically happen, creatively speaking. So, the idea is to be in a position next year where if I write, record, and produce a song in a few days or a week, that within a week or two or a few weeks, I can press a button and release it out to the world. That's my plan for the future. Probably no albums, probably. EPs and singles, as they come. That's the idea for the future. And to just be as happy and present and as creative as possible next year. And help the projects and people that need help. That's my goal for the future. That's how I am. Because, again, if I'm not in a position of focus and in a position of love, then, you know, I can't help anybody else. So that's my goal is to be fully in that headspace next year. 

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

The film Common Ground begins and ends with a letter for the future, for the children of the next generation. I believe you also may be working on a memoir. So as you reflect on your life and your art, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember? 

JULIAN LENNON

I think one of the key things that I've certainly earned is that you have to follow your instinct. You have to follow your gut. If it feels bad, walk away from it. You know, I think it's self-preservation. And again, it's the old adage that you can't help, you can't love other people if you don't love yourself. And it's akin to that. For me, it's about love and respect, and respecting differences, too. It's all about the fact that we are all different in every way, shape, or form, but you can still love someone for being different. We don't need to be the same to love each other. And nor do we have to have the same opinions. But certainly, I think it's wise to work together for the common good of not only our Earth but our lives and the lives of all creatures on this fair planet of ours. It's a magical world that we live on. It's unique, again, as far as we know, we're the only ones running around like mad people. And I think we should try and enjoy it as best as we can, and we should try and love as best as we can. And we should try and help each other as best as we can because, in the end, we're all connected in every way, shape, and form. And that is the be-all and end-all of it. We are one. We're all in this together.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sophie Garnier and Halia Reingold.

The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Katie Foster. Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists, artists, students, and teachers. Enjoy Part 1 of this Special Series with music courtesy of composer Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.

Voices on Part 1:

MAX RICHTER

INGRID NEWKIRK, Founder of PETA

BERTRAND PICCARD, Aviator of 1st Round-the-World Solar-Powered Flight, Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation

CARL SAFINA, Ecologist, Founding President of Safina Center

CLAIRE POTTER, Designer, Lecturer, Author of “Welcome to the Circular Economy”

ADA LIMÓN, U.S. Poet Laureate, Host of The Slowdown podcast

CYNTHIA DANIELS, Grammy and Emmy award-winning producer, engineer, composer

JOELLE GERGIS, Lead Author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Author of “Humanity’s Moment”

KATHLEEN ROGERS, President of EARTHDAY.ORG

ODED GALOR, Author of “The Journey of Humanity”, Founder of Unified Growth Theory

SIR GEOFF MULGAN, Fmr. Chief Executive of Nesta, Fmr, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit Director & Downing Street’s Head of Policy, Author of “Another World is Possible”

ALAIN ROBERT, Rock & Urban Climber known for Free Solo Climbing 150+ of the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers using no Climbing Equipment

NOAH WILSON-RICH, Co-founder & CEO of The Best Bees Company

CHRIS FUNK, Director of the Climate Hazards Center at UC Santa Barbara
Author of Drought, Flood, Fire: How Climate Change Contributes to Recent Catastrophes

DAVID FARRIER, Author of “Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils”

DR. SUZANNE SIMARD, Professor of Forest Ecology, Author of “Finding the Mother Tree”

PETER SINGER, “Most Influential Living Philosopher”, Author, Founder of The Life You Can Save

JENNIFER MORGAN, Fmr. Executive Director of Greenpeace International, Special Envoy for International Climate Action, German Foreign Ministry

ALMOND BLOSSOM, VINCENT VAN GOGH

Voices on Part 2:

MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO - Executive Director, Pritzker Architecture Prize - Fmr. Exec. Director of Venice Biennale, Visual Arts & Architecture Dept.

BRITT WRAY - Author of “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis”, Researcher Working on Climate Change & Mental Health, Stanford University

WALTER STAHEL - Architect, Economist, Founding Father of Circular Economy - Founder-Director, Product-Life Institute

MATHIS WACKERNAGEL - Founder & President of the Global Footprint Network - World Sustainability Award Winner

JAY FAMIGLIETTI, Fmr. Senior Water Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Exec. Director, Global Institute for Water Security, Host of "What About Water?" Podcast

RICHARD VEVERS - Founder & CEO of The Ocean Agency

ARMOND COHEN - Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force

PAULA PINHO - Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy

MARTIN VON HILDEBRAND - Indigenous Rights Activist - Winner of Right Livelihood & Skoll Awards - Founder of Fundacion Gaia Amazonas, named #40 NGOs of the World by The Global Journal

HAROLD P. SJURSEN - Professor of Philosophy - Science, Technology, the Arts - NYU, Beihang University, East China University

BILL HARE - Founder & CEO of Climate Analytics, Physicist, Climate Scientist

SIR ANDY HAINES - Tyler Prize Award-winner for Environmental Achievement - Professor of Environmental Change & Public Health

LISA JACKSON PULVER - Deputy Vice-Chancellor of University of Sydney's Indigenous Strategy & Services

This episode was created by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

Jill Heinerth is a Canadian cave diver, underwater explorer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker. She is a veteran of over thirty years of filming, photography, and exploration on projects in submerged caves around the world. She has made TV series, consulted on movies, written several books and is a frequent corporate keynote speaker. Jill is the first Explorer in Residence for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, recipient of Canada’s prestigious Polar Medal and is a Fellow of the International Scuba Divers Hall of Fame. In recognition of her lifetime achievement, Jill was awarded the Sir Christopher Ondaatje Medal for Exploration from the RCGS and the William Beebe Award from the Explorers Club.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS’ ONE PLANET PODCAST

You have this deep connection to the earth. We often distance ourselves from the planet and the consequences of our actions, but you have established this connection and strong intuition about the earth.

JILL HEINERTH

It's such a privilege swimming through these places. And I almost feel like I'm getting a secret peak into the body of the planet and that's a very precious and almost a sacred kind of collaboration where I get to experience this, I get to see this, but if I'm going to take these insanely challenging risks I need to make it worthwhile and share what I've seen so that other people have the benefit of understanding, a better conception of our connected planet. Both in the short term and in the long term scale as well. The sense of time can be warped by what's going on in my brain, so I do have this dance between left brain and right brain. Left brain pragmatic, right brain creative.

So if I'm managing a complicated life support device while I'm shooting stills or video underwater, there's a dual thing going on. The creative side of my brain loses all track of time, just as anyone that would ever sit down to paint or draw or even play on the computer. Time is just gone. But that left side of the brain has to keep track of time and constantly be monitoring my life support status. So there's a very present sense of time and forcing my brain back into keeping track of that, but these places that I swim through are timeless in the sense that many caves that I'm swimming through are like museums of natural history that inform us about things that happened in very ancient times on planet earth. So I'm swimming through this temporal portal to have a peek at ancient history.

Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver

If I die, it will be in the most glorious place that nobody has ever seen. I can no longer feel the fingers in my left hand. The glacial Antarctic water to see through a tiny puncture in my formerly waterproof glove. If this water were one-tenth of a degree colder, the ocean will become solid. Finding the knife-edged freeze is depleting my strength, my blood vessels throbbing in a futile attempt to deliver warmth to my extremities. The archway of ice above our heads is furrowed like the surface of a golf ball, carved by the hand of the sea. Iridescent blue, Wedgewood, azure, cerulean, cobalt, and pastel robin’s egg meld with chalk and silvery alabaster. The ice is vibrant, right, and at the same time ghostly. The beauty contradicts the danger. We are the first people to cave dive inside an iceberg. And we may not live to tell the story.

ONE PLANET PODCAST

So you talked about working with other people and needing to get a certain shot or bring back data. Have you found that there's ever a disconnect between being yourself in these places, seeing these things, and other people who are just looking at the information that you bring back?

JILL HEINERTH

It's interesting because I'm an artist, a citizen scientist. I think of myself primarily as an artist, where many scientists that I work with are very pure applied scientists. And so when you are working for an academic institution, there's a very strict sort of chain of events, and protocols for observation, research, and writing for a peer review publication takes a long time. And at each step of the way that peer applied scientist needs to be quite specific and careful with their language. So they're not saying anything that can't be immediately and fully defended otherwise they might harm their reputation. Where an artist is really encouraged to sort of paint and imagine and just throw crazy ideas out there and brainstorm. So we might say things that are like, "Oh my gosh, did you see that skull? It's got silver teeth on it. Gee, I wonder if they were hiding their valuables inside this skull? Or whether that was a decorative application or whatever?" So we could throw out these crazy ideas, and the scientist is constantly going, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's wait. We need to get evidence, research... And so we kind of temper each other in that yin-yang sort of way. But I would propose the planet doesn't have time for some of that traditional science anymore, and we need to put a little bit more effort into involving artists and citizen scientists in contributing to that data stream and the idea stream that can be synthesized into solving some of the planet's greatest issues right now, like water issues and climate change.

ONE PLANET PODCAST

It’s challenging telling stories to the very youngest children and those who are not yet readers. Tell us about your book The Aquanaut.

JILL HEINERTH

I wrote a book called The Aquanaut for kids. I realized that our best hope for humanity is to ignite the imagination of kids. There were lots of things I was afraid of when I was a little kid. I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid to go down the basement stairs, and yet now I live most of my entire career in the dark, in places that would make people feel terrified and claustrophobic. So a lot of those young life experiences that I had I actually turned into my superpowers. And I want to encourage children to know that anything they dream of that they can make it come true with hard work and dedication. I talk all the time to groups, big and small, and I still get asked by people, "Do you believe in climate change?" And I'm like, it's not a question of belief. It's science. It's happening. And although I might feel frustrated, I try to never communicate that frustration. I recognize that for whatever reason, someone just doesn't have the knowledge. So maybe it hasn't been taught at school. Maybe they've become subjected to the very strong voices of a political entity that has steered them away from believing in climate change. And so I try to take people at wherever they are and try to just very carefully and without judgment share what I've seen and my experiences and try to gently guide them towards better information sources because we can't just be polarized. We can't just call each other names when we don't understand. We have to help people to understand, put out a hand, and, hopefully, bring them onto our side, onto a better understanding of the science of what's occurring.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Ellen Efstathiou with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Ellen Efstathiou.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

Mathis Wackernagel is Co-founder and President of Global Footprint Network. He created the Ecological Footprint with Professor William Rees at the University of British Columbia as part of his Ph.D. in community and regional planning. Mathis also earned a mechanical engineering degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Mathis has worked on sustainability with governments, corporations and international NGOs on six continents and has lectured at more than a hundred universities. He previously served as director of the Sustainability Program at Redefining Progress in Oakland, California, and ran the Centro de Estudios para la Sustentabilidad at Anáhuac University in Xalapa, Mexico.

Mathis has authored and contributed to more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, numerous articles, reports and various books on sustainability that focus on embracing resource limits and developing metrics for sustainability, including Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth; Sharing Nature’s Interest; Der Footprint: Die Welt neu vermessen; Ecological Footprint: Managing Our Biocapacity Budget; and WWF International’s Living Planet Report.
Mathis’ awards include the 2018 World Sustainability Award, the 2015 IAIA Global Environment Award, being a 2014 ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Inductee, the 2013 Prix Nature Swisscanto, 2012 Blue Planet Prize, 2012 Binding Prize for Nature Conservation, the 2012 Kenneth E. Boulding Memorial Award of the International Society for Ecological Economics, the 2011 Zayed International Prize for the Environment (jointly awarded with UNEP), an honorary doctorate from the University of Berne in 2007, a 2007 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, 2006 WWF Award for Conservation Merit and 2005 Herman Daly Award of the U.S. Society for Ecological Economics. He was also selected as number 19 on the en(rich) list identifying the 100 top inspirational individuals whose contributions enrich paths to sustainable futures (www.enrichlist.org). John Elkington identified Mathis among the “Zeronaut 50” Roll of Honor, i.e., leading pioneers who are driving the world’s most significant problems to zero. From 2011 to 2015, Mathis was also the Frank H. T. Rhodes Class of 1956 Visiting Professor at Cornell University. Footprint Tools · Overshoot Day

THE CREATIVE PROCESS’ ONE PLANET PODCAST

You've been on this awareness-raising mission for some time. Tell us about the history and mission of the Global Footprint Network.

MATHIS WACKERNAGEL

Actually, awareness doesn't help. We are on the campaign to produce a desire for that transformation. Information is useless unless it's empowering. And of course, it has to be factual. If it's not factual, then it's going to be found out, and it also has to be relevant because otherwise, it's irrelevant. But if it's just relevant, it actually may just be counterproductive because if people see it as relevant but not empowering, they will use their brain to fight it.

So that's why I think awareness campaigns don't work. We can only work on motivation, helping people to find a greater desire to get there, to say, yeah, that's what I want. A sense of agency that they say I can do something about it. Also, a sense of curiosity because we really don't know how to get there eventually.

So, it takes a bit more than just awareness and that's what we learned a bit painfully, obviously, over the last 30 years or painfully because in the beginning we just thought, Oh, why don't people just measure how many planets we have compared to how many we use? And once they see the number, it would be very obvious to them.

So we were the first to start to - and still are I think - the main accounting approach to compare directly how big human activities are compared to what the planet can renew. So it started, perhaps I would say, in reaction to the Brundtland Report, which brought sustainable development to the global stage and had a very complicated definition of sustainable development, “Meeting the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

In my way of talking, I try to move away from the word responsibility because people don't come to me and say, 'Thank you so much for giving me responsibility,' rather they avoid me at parties and so, how do we talk about it? So I like more the metaphor of brushing your teeth. Brushing your teeth is not so much an imposition. "You must brush your teeth, otherwise, you're a really bad person, you know? No, you just brush your teeth because you want to have healthy teeth. It's not a capitalist plot either. They say, Oh, you're such a capitalist, protecting the capital in your jaw. No, we want to have healthy teeth. So it is just protecting your teeth is necessary. Make an effort today to protect the health of your tooth tomorrow. And that's kind of a similar approach. So the same principles that apply to a country or a city also apply to an individual. I mean, an individual could be an investor or can have a pension fund. And so the question is my investment going to be more valued in the future or not? Probably it's more likely to be valuable if it is aligned with what the future will look like. Or you're making decisions about where to live. Like if you make yourself dependent on cars, then every time gasoline prices go up, then you get more exposed.

If you can live with fewer resources, then you feel more safe. So we are talking more about resource security rather than reducing your demand, which is the same thing, but it comes with a twist. If we talk about you've got to reduce your demand, it generates resentment in society because if I put an effort into showering less or with cold water or not going somewhere, and I see my neighbor still doing it, I feel resentful about that neighbor. So it generates resentment in society. It's because you think I gave myself up for humanity and you didn't. Then it's unfair, you know? But if you think from a perspective of resource security, and you learn how to live not by depending on that many resources, you feel safe for yourself.

And if your neighbor is not able to do it and still depends on all of the resources, you can feel empathy for the neighbor. Oh my god, my neighbor is really exposed. And so it's so by empathy, it's kind of a more stable mechanism. So I think we have to find ways to build empathy for saying, Wow, it's really about preparing ourselves.

Like with COVID, if you protect yourself, that's good for society as well. And so that's kind of a win-win that we want to develop.  Big shifts are needed if you want to be able to operate in the future. So it is very serious. I think in the end, only things we want to do will happen. So I think the best thing to get on that track is to, in our own speech, ban the word should because as soon as we say should, we indicate it's not going to happen, and we lose agency.

ONE PLANET

And you work within the EU. How do you navigate the transnational complexity?

WACKERNAGEL

I think actually it's not that complex. Complexity is a racket for not wanting to act. Whole institutions try to generate complexity so everybody can become and maintain business as usual. It's not so complex because, in the end, there's just one planet Earth we live on. It's hard to get to Mars. That's that. And so how can we thrive within that planetary constraint? So I think the first thing is to say is this whole conundrum we live in is not your burden. We personify Earth. Or the world. The world and I. So it's not that complex in a sense. So we often personify the Earth, the world, and say, me and the earth, me are the planet. I'm trying to help the world! The world doesn't help me, or whatever, but actually, the world is so big. Even if you are a big country like the United States or China, you're still one little piece of a much bigger world, so it's more helpful rather than saying, "This is my burden" to recognize the conundrums you are in as your context. That's just your game board. You're on that game board, and the question is what is helpful? The second point is what is helpful is solutions that are replicable, and physically replicable, are good for you because you're much more likely to succeed. With them, you're not running into competition. And it also helps others more than they want others to also take on these solutions because they're replicable are not in competition with you. So that's kind of the true meaning of win-win solutions. Solutions that are replicable are more stable. They make the system more stable. So that's kind of the two simple rules. Recognize it's your context. The second one is focus on replicable solutions, and the complexity just falls away. And you can live with ease and enjoy.

*

As a minimal condition to be able to persist, we cannot use forever more than what we get back from nature, what nature can renew. It's a very mechanical view, but we are not even fulfilling this mechanical, bottom-line requirement. Ecologists will tell you that to maintain biodiversity because wild species are in competition for that regeneration, maybe it's not a good idea to use the entire capacity of the planet.

So shooting for one planet just means you would be totally dominant, and leave no space for other species. Ecologists say to maintain 85% of preindustrial biodiversity, it would take about at least half the planet left on its own. That would mean getting to half-planet. And now we use at least 1.75. I say at least because our assessments with about 15,000 data points per country in year are based on UN statistics, and their demand side is probably an underestimate because not all demands are included. And also on the supply side or the regeneration side, the UN is very production oriented, so it's the FAO numbers, for example, look at agricultural production, and the depletion side or the destruction side is not factored in adequately.

So that's why it's an underestimate. And still, it shows we use about 1.75 Earths, and that's more than three times half an Earth. So that's kind of the difference. But we also know overshoot will end one way or another. The question is do we choose to end it? Do we choose it by design, or do we let nature take the lead and end overshoot by disaster? So it's really ending overshoot by design or disaster. That's the big choice we need to make.

*

For example, in Germany alone, 43% of the population knows about the Earth Overshoot Date. We serve all countries with a staff of 20 people. And people know about it, perhaps not sufficiently that they feel empowered. So that's one way of trying to influence the public debate overall. We are still pretty miserable in kind of transforming the conversation. They're still stuck in this mindset or trap, which essentially stands for an inconvenient truth means the more you know, the worse you're off. Who wants to know more if you're worse off? You know, it's a trap really. 

So by looking at the effect of overshoot, which we think is the second largest risk for humanity, it actually becomes easier to address because all things come together, and you start to see the self-interest to act. Because if you're in a world of overshoot, and you're not able to be resource-secured, really it's going to hurt you. So it's not just being nice to the rest of the world. I mean, that too, but primarily, it also becomes really essential. If you're not ready for that world, it's going to be very difficult for you. So by bringing this story out, make it resonant, people then also come to us, companies approach us and say, “Let's work with each other.” And it may not be that important how big they are, because we are impressed by stories to a large extent, so the more we can show examples where people build their own success by thinking about the world from that perspective, that's probably convincing others in some ways. So it's very hard to work effectively with institutions who deeply believe that the information is inconvenient because they come up with excuses and you try to overcome the excuses. And by the time you've overcome these excuses, they have invented seven other excuses. Like the hydra, chop off the head, and seven more heads grow. So I think that's really the big tragedy we find. And I think it actually would be so simple if we had a better narrative. We're so in love with the narrative of pointing fingers that we don't see the obvious.

So it's like we are on a boat, and we see a big storm approach. And we realize our boat is not too seaworthy. And then the first thing we do is we go to an international Boat Owners Conference to find out who needs to fix their boat first. Doesn't make that much sense to me, you know?

And then we complexify the story rather than saying, “Actually I am exposed.” And so when you say, “Oh, the poor Maldives,” we take ourselves out of the game. “It's about these others.” It's actually about each one of us in some ways."

*

I'm not against conferences per se. For example, it's good to learn from each other and coordinate whatever is possible. It's just more the idea of commitment. All we have to commit more. If you say commitment to somebody who is not totally convinced already, what they hear is cost, effort, more complication, and so lots of commitments are made and not even those who make them follow up. You know it's a strange mind frame. 

*

I think it may sound extremely capitalist, but I think it's more about securing our asset base because if our assets are not fit for the future... Assets are there to provide for us, and assets like our houses, our transport system, our energy system are there to provide for our needs. Losing in value means they're less able to provide for our needs. So in the broadest sense, the transformation is about securing that our asset base can be maintained and doesn't whittle away. So yes, it could be that if you look at the end that there would be changes, but is it a sacrifice? Same sacrifice if an investor says, "Oh, you're sacrificing money. You could spend it now, and you invest it somewhere else." So it's a sacrifice in the short run to kind of get more benefit in the future, in some ways. But I think the suffering and sacrifice mode, if that's what's at the forefront of people's understanding, it reduces the possibility for people joining the invitation.

Some people want to lose weight, and there's very little talk about, "Oh, you'd be so hungry, so miserable. You'd be having headaches, be craving food for months to come." No, we say, "Hey, on this program you'll start to feel better and have vitality and look good and everything. So it's worth the effort. Let's do it, and it's going to be so great." So it's how we position it. It's kind of similar to if we lead with only the negatives without understanding why it's such a great return on investment, then we won't be able to win people over.

*

The main advice we give is to sleep enough. You need to be rested so you can also have a rested brain and make good decisions because in the end, it's about good decisions. It's not that complicated. Trust yourself. And you're needed. I think what society often tells younger people, You're not needed. You have to go to school forever and then get the first internship. But young people are extremely needed because the transformation that will come upon us is larger than that of the iPhone, you know. Just for the entire economy, the innovation that is required is just infinite. So it's going to be challenging, but it's also going to be quite fascinating to be part of it. So, it's going to be a ride.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Eveline Mol with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this episode was Eveline Mol. Digital Media Coordinators are Jacob A. Preisler and Megan Hegenbarth. 

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

A founding father of the circular economy, Walter R. Stahel is the Founder-Director of the Product-Life Institute (Switzerland), the oldest established consultancy in Europe devoted to developing sustainable strategies and policies. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Circular Economy Research Centre, Ecole des Ponts Business School and Visiting Professor in the Department of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Surrey. He is also a full member of the Club of Rome. He was awarded degrees of Doctor honoris causa by the University of Surrey, l’Université de Montréal, and the 2020 Thornton Medal of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. He is the author of The Circular Economy: A User’s Guide.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS’ ONE PLANET PODCAST

Just outline for us four stages of the circular economy.

WALTER STAHEL

The circularity, of course, has existed in nature for a long time. Actually, nature's circularity is by evolution. There is no plan, there is no liability, and there are no preferences. It's simply the cycles such as marine tides, CO2, and water cycles, plants and animals, and basically by evolution, the best solution wins. Also, there is no waste. Dead material becomes food for other animals or plants. Now, early mankind survived by depending on these local natural resources sharing a non-monetary chaotic symbiosis dominated by nature, then poverty or necessity-based society changed when humankind used science to overcome shortages of everything. In other words, the Anthropocene. With nuclear energy, petrochemicals, metal alloys, we became independent from nature, but we overlooked the fact that these new manmade anthropogenic resources or synthetic resources were unknown to nature, so nature could not deal with them. And that means that we, humankind, has to take responsibility for it.

*

We have to solve three problems. We have to create a low-waste society through incentives to change individual behavior from consumer to user through loss and waste prevention, and intelligent resource management. We also have to create a low-carbon society by preserving the water, electricity, and CO2 emissions embodied in physical assets or through innovation in green electricity and circular energy. And the third challenge, which is probably the biggest, we have to create a low anthropogenic mass society by preserving these existing stocks of infrastructure, buildings, equipment, vehicles, and objects.

The only strategy I know that can fulfill these three challenges is a circular industrial economy. Now the last point, low anthropogenic mass society is simply because some years ago, the rapidly growing anthropogenic mass has become bigger than the world's biomass. And that of course means we are destroying the biomass because we have a limited planet, and we are destroying biodiversity and replacing it with synthetic manmade materials and objects. And this in the long term means we are killing ourselves, so we have to stop producing anthropogenic mass, except in countries that don't yet have sufficient infrastructures for education, health, living, and sufficient food to feed the population.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Yansong Li with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Yansong Li. Digital Media Coordinators are Jacob A. Preisler and Megan Hegenbarth. 

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

Jeffrey D. Sachs is University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Chair of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission, Co-Chair of the UN Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition, Commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, academician of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, and Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Honorary Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development at Sunway University. Sachs has been Special Advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres. Sachs was twice named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders, and has received 38 honorary doctorates. He received the Legion of Honor from France in 2021 and the Order of the Cross from Estonia in 2019.
Jeffrey Sachs hosts “The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs” podcast featuring renowned authors of scintillating, inspiring and remarkably important books about history, social justice, and the challenges of building a decent world. Previous conversations feature Mariana Mazzucato, author of “Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism,” and Robert Lustig, author of “Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine” among others.
SDG Academy

JEFFREY SACHS

If we’re badly educated, we’re not going to make it on this planet. If I had to put my finger on one Sustainable Development Goal above all else, it is let’s empower young people so that they know the future. They know the world that they’re going to be leading soon. They can do something about it…Specifically, target 4.7 which says that everybody should learn about sustainable development. Everybody should learn about global citizenship.

If you’re in elementary school up to university, you should be learning–What is climate change? What is biodiversity? What can we do about it? And this kind of learning is not only book learning, but is also experiential learning.

Photo: EFA 2019

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Eveline Mol with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Eveline Mol. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

Paula Pinho is Director of the European Commission’s DG for Energy , responsible for Just Transition, Consumers, Energy Efficiency, Innovation and Energy security. She was responsible for Energy Strategy and Policy coordination and then for Renewables and Energy System Integration Policy and Decarbonisation and Sustainability of Energy Sources. She was Acting Director for Energy Policy where she has overseen notably the work of international energy relations, financial instruments and inter-institutional relations.

Paula has also been Member of Cabinet of EU Commissioners, including Commissioner for Energy Günther Oettinger both in his quality of Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society and during his mandate as EU Commissioner for Energy. She was then responsible for energy security and infrastructure and the overall coordination of the international dimension of energy policy.

As a member of the Cabinet, she has been involved in the trilateral gas talks between the EU, Russia and Ukraine. While Head of Unit responsible for Energy Strategy and Policy Coordination, Paula has coordinated the preparation and adoption of the “Clean Energy for all Europeans” package. Paula represented the Commission in the negotiations of the Commission Proposal for a Regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union and was responsible notably for the overall coordination of the assessment of the national Energy and Climate Plans. Paula speaks fluently Portuguese, German, English and French, as well as Spanish and Italian.

We’re excited to announce our new Future Cities podcast and are kicking off the series with our interview with Paula Pinho. Find us on Apple Podcasts & Spotify.

PAULA PINHO

This is a very important question because cities are really living labs of everything that we're doing in terms of energy policy, and it’s extremely important that whatever we are putting forward in terms of policy, if it is not embraced by the citizens in cities on the local level, the best policies will not serve any purpose if they not really taken up by citizens, and so we've been working a lot hand in hand with cities. You may have heard of the Covenant of Mayors which brings together cities, initially across the EU, but thanks to its big success, today it’s bringing together cities across the world, the global Covenant of Mayors.

And it is really exciting to see how many cities through their mayors, through their local populations are adhering to the decarbonization goals and you see how despite the differences, because we're talking about cities across the whole world, a shared objective of decarbonization, decarbonizing the public transport, decarbonizing the way we go about building efficiency, the way we consume energy, but also the way we produce energy with solar panels, for instance, being rolled out with the support of policies and sometimes with the support of funding. So it’s really crucial to work with cities to see how it plays out everything that's is being proposed. How does it play out in the various cities? We also have what is called the Cities Mission which again builds upon the cities, in view of decarbonization and sometimes it's really interesting to see how the individual cities are more ambitious than their national government and are really pushing ahead and are giving the example. And for us it’s absolutely crucial because these cities are showing it is possible to implement these policies, these targets on renewables, on energy-efficiency, on climate, and they are showing that it is possible to implement, they’re showing the difference in terms of air quality, in terms of quality life for their citizens, so it's an impressive partnership and one but I really would not like to give up.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

How do we educate for the future? How can each of us become more climate literate? How important is training and teaching young people about climate change, science, and their role in shaping change and as the leaders of tomorrow?

PINHO

You raising really a very important aspect which is how do we communicate with citizens about policies? How do we raise awareness, and of course a lot through education, early at school. Personally, I think we're still far from an ideal school program. We should introduce new disciplines in terms of sustainability from early on. I'm always impressed I have to say nonetheless by the awareness of young people and even children, I speak of my own children who are sometimes more conscious and environmentally friendly than their parents and draw our attention to how to go about energy consumption efficiently and not to buy fruits in plastics. I think of course today there is much more awareness than in my generation and the generation of my parents, but I think we could do much more from much earlier on in a structured manner to raise awareness, bring it into school programs, how important it is to care for the planet. How it can be done by every single one of us in the way we consume not just energy, but our choices, of what we buy in the supermarket or grocery shops. There's much more that can be done.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

There are many sustainable development goals. Which is the most important for you, and which do you feel we are coming closest to achieving?

PINHO

I think there's still a lot to be done. I think of all of the sustainable development goals of course I’d be suspicious if I said that the one about affordable and clean energy is a key one. But to be honest, I think quality education is really the basis, I would call it really the foundation for practically all the sustainable development goals. If you ensure quality education, all the rest will be easier, all the other goals.

And then of course the background of one sustainable development goal that we have unfortunately overlooked because we have taken it for granted over the past decades, which is really peace and justice. In Europe, we've been spoiled in a way, apart from the situation in Yugoslavia, but otherwise for 16 years, we've been spared. This is in a way unprecedented in history. It’s now two generations, my generation, the generation my children who have been living without seeing a war in Europe. And I think we’ve all taken that for granted and a week now since the invasion of Ukraine, we are being reminded that this is not to be taken for granted and that we need to continue to nurture peace, to nurture the democratic values actively. That it’s not there and accomplished and we can just take it for granted. It needs to be nurtured by all on a daily basis.

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I’ve been working on energy now for almost 12 years. I worked in different areas also on trade. I was responsible back then in the cabinet already for energy security at a crucial time. All the way heading to 2014, where we were again faced with a threat that gas supplies would be disrupted from Russia over Ukraine, where we would have been the victims of the side-effect of already some confrontation between Ukraine and Russia. Today it feels like take two of this episode, except back then it was really limited to energy, and today it became what it is, which is really a human tragedy – much beyond energy. In 2013 and 2014, I was involved in the negotiations to reach a trilateral agreement between Russia, Ukraine, and the EU, so as to ensure supplies of gas through Ukraine because, as you know, the biggest supplier of gas to the EU and also of oil in Ukraine, and we were keen on having these two countries, the supplier and also Ukraine as a transit country to work together and worried about energy security of the EU but also worried about energy security of Ukraine. That was of course also after the financial crisis, which hit us, when I was also already working with the cabinets and where you see the challenge of finding solutions beyond national borders – because these challenges, be it the financial crisis, be it now with COVID, be it back then also the energy security threat – these are all challenges that we have been facing in the EU but some of them also globally which can really not have a proper response only at a national level, and where it is of crucial importance that we put our forces together and that we find common solutions.

We realize the green deal and what we are aiming at is not just about decarbonization, and this is really one of the big challenges that our society is facing today is climate change. And the green deal is about tackling that societal challenge, which is climate change, but it is more than that. For the EU, it is also about energy security and about diversification. And if it is was not clear to everyone, I think today, within one week, we’ve seen even those who may have been, let’s say, more reserved about some of the ambitions of the green deal, now realize that it’s absolutely urgent to diversify, even more than we have in the past few years and to radically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. And of course within that dependence, to reduce our dependence on our main supplier. We really need to bring that dependence down and replace it with renewable energy, make the most of energy efficiency, make the most of sustainability and circularity. So the green deal is in my view further boosted with this horrible tragedy which reminds us of many many values that we pursue but which we are not always aware of. Peace, democracy, but also now the need for a sustainable economy and a decarbonized energy system.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Cynthia Desmet Villar with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Cynthia Desmet Villar. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.
Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

Kevin Trenberth is a Distinguished Scholar at the National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder and an Honorary Academic in the Department of Physics, Auckland University in Auckland, New Zealand. From New Zealand, he obtained his Sc. D. in meteorology in 1972 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a lead author of the 1995, 2001 and 2007 Scientific Assessment of Climate Change reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize which went to the IPCC. He served from 1999 to 2006 on the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), and chaired a number of committees for more than 20 years. He is the author of The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System.

KEVIN TRENBERTH

The whole social fabric that we have is based upon the past climate, and so once we cross that threshold, it's what I call the Straw that Breaks the Camel's Back Syndrome. And so you have a relatively modest change, which I estimate to be in the neighborhood of 5 to 20 percent, typically. And that is enough to nudge us. Instead of 1 billion dollars in damage from a hurricane, we end up with 100 billion dollars. Now, that's just one example. There are many other cases, but the sort of things that happen are indeed that something floods, the amount of water can no longer be tolerated, something completely dries out, there's a drought, and subsequent wildfires when buildings burn down, and so on. Suddenly you've gone from something to nothing. That's an extreme non-linearity. And another extreme non-linearity is, of course, when people die, you don't recover from that.

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I think certainly we're going to go through 1.5 degrees Celsius. I think the best estimate is probably somewhere around 2032 or thereabouts, the early 2030s. And at the current rate we're going, we'll go through 2 degrees Celsius in the mid to late 2050s. Now there's certainly time to slow that rate of increase down, and we could easily push the 2 degrees Celsius threshold out to 2070 or 2080.

And with really strong efforts, we might be able to hold the overall global mean surface temperature increase to something maybe close to that. Although, whether it goes past it and then comes back a little bit to it, remains to be seen. So this relates to current policies and what nations are committed to doing.

Certainly, if everyone's current policies and what they're committed to doing were in place, we would be in a much better situation than we actually are because a lot of those policies have been mentioned, but there are no implementation plans in many countries. There was a recent report  I saw, which said that maybe two countries in the world, out of 190 something countries, are maybe on track to meeting their obligations on the COP26 meeting in Glasgow last year.

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How can you get to the point where people are actually not moving around as much and reducing their carbon footprint in various ways? The main way we're planning on doing that is decarbonizing the economy. This means electrifying a lot of things. People still are moving around. They're now using electric cars, but they're still using cars. How can you build new cities that don't require that in quite the same way? And maybe we've got some visions as to the sort of things that might happen or should happen during the pandemic when people suddenly couldn't travel, or they were in lockdown, and they had to work from home. Increasingly people have been able to work from home. This was something I advocated a long time ago when I was working at NCAR is that we needed to develop better ways of going to a seminar without driving eight miles across town to a building where that was actually happening.

*

This is an intergenerational problem. The response to climate change relates very much to value systems. And one of the questions people ask or should ask is: How much do you value the future generations? How much do you value the world that you're leaving your children and your grandchildren? And what kind of a climate you're leaving them with?

And some people don't care, and some people don't have children. And they say, "Eh, it's not an issue for me. It's not one of my values." And so this is part of the problem, but if you're thinking about peoples as a whole, all of the community that you're leaving behind, this is a collective problem. And that's the way I think of it is that this is very much an intergenerational problem, and therefore it's in the interests of young people to get much more involved and much more politically active.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Xander Brodeur with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Lila Muscosky and Xander Brodeur. Digital Media Coordinators are Jacob A. Preisler and Megan Hegenbarth. 

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

Victor A. Lopez-Carmen is a Dakota and Yaqui writer, health advocate, and student at Harvard Medical School. He is cofounder of the Ohiyesa Premedical Program at the Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), which supports Indigenous community and tribal college students to pursue healthcare education. He also founded Translations for our Nations, a grant funded initiation that translated accurate COVID-19 information into over 40 Indigenous languages from over 20 different countries. For his work, he has been featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 and Native American 40 under 40 lists. He is Co-Chair of the UN Global Indigenous Youth Caucus.

VICTOR A. LOPEZ-CARMEN

My mom and my dad would often go to protests. They would organize movements. They'd be part of multilateral indigenous people's movements, not only nationally, but internationally, that were operating at the grassroots level. Activism, it’s a tradition in my family for indigenous rights. I have aunts and uncles that were very involved as well. So as a kid, I was often at those protests. I was running around as a little Native kid with all the other little Native kids, when our parents would be in meetings discussing how to move forward discussing indigenous rights.

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One of our chiefs was a Chief Crazy Horse. When they rode into battle to meet the US soldiers, his war cry was "Only the Earth lives forever!" And to me, that's really powerful because it shows what we were fighting for, and that they were willing to die for Mother Earth to protect it from this really nasty mining.

The killing of the animals and the deforestation that they were willing to put their lives on the line for that. And the U.S. Government, from our stories and what our elders told us, they weren't able to defeat us until they started killing our women, our children, and killing elders, and massacring in a really non-honorable way.

Our elders always tell us that they weren't able to defeat us ever in an honorable battle until they started targeting the women, children, elders, and starving us by... They almost massacred the buffalo to extinction. They almost made the buffalo go extinct because that was our food source, and eventually our people were starving, and that's why they moved on to the reservation because they didn't have any more food because the government killed all the buffalo. So that's a story that we're still told today, and we keep in our hearts that our ancestors were never defeated honorably. They fought for the Earth. They fought for the land to protect it, and that we still have to do that.

*

So we've been here for thousands of years, and we've developed a language during that time. So integrated into the language is so much knowledge about how to live in our traditional territories. In our traditional territories, our language developed, and because of that, our culture is so embedded within the language and the land. It's almost interconnected with it, with the different animals that live there, with the different species, the plants, all our metaphors have something to do with the land that we've been on. And because we're so connected to it, and it's part of our spirituality as well. When we say intergenerational values are in our language, that's part of it because when we are speaking our language, it's passing on our culture. It's passing on that connection that we have to our ancestors on the land. It's passing on how to live on the land. It's passing on all the methods and the science that we've developed for thousands of years of how things work on the land.

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They've shown that 70 to 80% of the biodiversity left on Planet Earth today, of all the plants, all the different lifeforms, 70 to 80% are situated in indigenous territories right now. And we only make up around 5% of the global population. So we are literally, the way that we operate and the way that we are, is literally saving the planet because we're the ones who are still taking care of it. We're still protecting it, and our languages are the things that help us do that.

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I think it's our most important battle right now to save the language for indigenous peoples. I think that I'm grateful personally that we still have it because there are only eight tribes in the U.S. that have more than 5,000 speakers of their language today, and I come from two tribes that are part of those eight.

So I'm very grateful that we still have fluent speakers because a lot of tribes don't really have that. They don't really have the numbers that they need to really make it integrated, which we could still do and which we still do. At ceremonies, you hear indigenous language all the time. I still hear my parents, like my dad, my stepdad speaking in Yaqui with someone at the ceremony. And I'm like, Wow, I'm so happy that we have that. And it just makes me feel like I'm not... I don't want to take that for granted. We have the privilege to be able to connect with this generation that grew up fluent still.

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It can be very difficult. When we say seven generations, our generations are longer - from grandparent to grandparent - it's not the Western idea of one generation. So it's even longer than most people would know, and the thing is it does take practice. It does take true intention, not only individually, but societal, community intention. It has to be built into the structure of a community, of a country, of a tribe. And for our tribes, for my tribe, that was built into our structure. It was built into the way that we lived.

Victor Lopez-Carmen with Ohiyesa Premedical Program participants and guest speaker Dr. Valerie Stone

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Maureen Nole with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Maureen Nole. Digital Media Coordinators are Jacob A. Preisler and Megan Hegenbarth. 

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

David R. Montgomery teaches at the University of Washington where he studies the evolution of topography and how geological processes shape landscapes and influence ecological systems. He loved maps as a kid and now writes about the relationship of people to their environment, and regenerative agriculture. In 2008 he was named a MacArthur Fellow. He is the author of award-winning popular-science books (King of Fish, Dirt, and Growing a Revolution) and co-authored The Hidden Half of Nature, The Microbial Roots of Life and Health, and What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health with his wife, biologist Anne Biklé.
twitter @dig2grow

DAVID R. MONTGOMERY

When you dig into the medical literature, 7 out of 10 of the leading causes of death in the United States are diet-related chronic diseases. And so one of the hopeful messages that I think comes out of The Hidden Half of Nature, Growing a Revolution, and What Your Food Ate is that what we do to the land, essentially we do to us. And what's good for the land is good for us.

So if we think about farming differently, we can actually enjoy ripple effects that are not only beneficial to the farmers in terms of reduced costs for fertilizer, pesticides, and diesel - the three of the big costs in farming today. If we can farm and grow as much food using less of those kind of synthetic inputs, we'll all be better off. And farmers will be better off and more profitable, but it could also translate into better human health outcomes at a population level.

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Imbalance of Omega-3 and Omega-6 Fats in Our Diets Lead to Chronic Disease

Now we know that those two kinds of fats, omega-3 and omega-6, share many biochemical pathways in our bodies. So if our cell walls are full of omega-6 fats they swamp theomega-3s in terms of their availability because they share all these chemical pathways but they do different things.

And so the ancestral human diet had 1 to 1, to 1 to 4 to 1 ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s. It was very different than the modern Western diet, which is more like 10 to 20 to 30 to 1, in terms of omega-6s to omega-3s. In other words, relative to the amount of omega3s in our diets, the omega-6s have gone through the roof. And why is that? Because seeds are very rich in omega-6s, whereas vegetables, leafy greens, animals that have grazed off of living pastures, they're all rich in omega-3s. So if we're eating a lot of processed foods that are grain-derived, then we're getting a lot of omega-6s. And if our livestock from which we're getting our meat and dairy are raised on a diet of grains, we're getting a lot of omega-6s. So the human diet has changed a lot in the last a hundred years in terms of those two kinds of fats. And that's not the only thing that's affected our health or the only thing that agriculture has changed, but it's an underappreciated key piece of the puzzle, I think, in terms of why inflammation-rooted diseases, chronic diseases have gone through the roof in the last 50 years. Well, up until the recent and ongoing pandemic, modern medicine has gotten very good at treating infectious diseases. What really affects our health today are these chronic diseases. And seven out of 10 of the leading killers in the U.S. are chronic diseases rooted in diet.

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Soil Infertility & Global Food Production Capacity

We're losing about 0.3% of our global food production capacity each and every year to ongoing soil loss and degradation. On an individual year, that's hard to notice 0.3%, but if you run it out over a hundred years, that becomes 30%.

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It looks like modern farming practices have reduced the amount of three key things in the human diet, mineral micronutrients, which are important - these things like copper and zinc that are important for our immune system, then also phytochemicals, plant-made compounds that we might know as more like antioxidants or anti-inflammatories, things that have medicinal effects in our bodies. And then also the way that we raise livestock influences the mix of fats in our meat and dairy products, particularly the amount of omega-3 fats that help to quell or reduce inflammation, and the amount of omega-6 fats that help to initiate or start inflammation.

And by feeding our livestock on a grain-based diet, grains are rich in omega-6 fats, our meat and dairy products have become very much enriched in these pro-inflammatory fats, whereas pasture-raised or animals that graze on living plants, the photosynthetic parts in particular, are rich in omega-3 fats.

The way that we farm matters to not just the health of our own societies over centuries to millennia, but to our individual health in terms of what's actually in what we eat.

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The last few decades have seen an explosion of information in terms of how our actions affect the natural world and, ranging from the climate to the soil, to water, there's an awful lot of things that we've been doing that are degrading the life support systems of a planet that our descendants are going to depend on.

We need to quite radically readdress many of those basic issues about how we live in the land, how we raise our food, and reframe the way we think about them in terms of how to pass on the world in better shape than we got it. We're at a point where we now have the knowledge to be able to try and think about doing that. In terms of the soil, we have the examples of regenerative farmers who've been very good at figuring out ways to farm in a way that uses less fossil fuel, that builds soil's organic matter back up that I think would actually produce healthier food for the human populace.

And yet, when you think about how the future gets shaped, it's through each one of our individual choices integrated over a lot of us. And so I would encourage people to think what are the things that one can do in your own life that can actually leave the world better off in terms of your own consuming choices, your own food choices, but also think about how you might spend your time and how you might advocate for a better future for those who will come to follow us because I think, frankly, we really are this century in a place where the shape of humanity for centuries to come is going to be influenced by the choices we make over the next few decades. We've got 20, 30, 40 years, probably, to get off fossil fuels and to reshape agriculture in ways that make the climate and our soil sustainable.

There's lots of things we can spend our time arguing about culturally and in terms of politics, let alone wars. It's crazy for humanity to be distracting ourselves with conflict between people at a time when the whole future of humanity is really at stake in terms of what we do this century. And we've got some big problems ahead of us in terms of the nature of the climate and how we will feed ourselves going forward, but we have solutions within our grasp if we employ them, if we think about them, if we support the politics that actually can implement them.

So I would suggest that people, looking forward, don't give into despair. It's far too easy to look at the state of the world today and be convinced that it's going to hell in a handbasket. I've become much more of an optimist in terms of some issues. There's a lot of work that needs to be done, and I may not live long enough to see it achieved, but in the big picture of things, none of us live all that long. Anyway, what really matters is the state of what we leave for those who will follow us and try and make the world a better place.

Photo credit: Cooper Reid

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Lyn Flores with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Lyn Flores. Digital Media Coordinators are Jacob A. Preisler and Megan Hegenbarth. 

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).